Big thanks to Gundam Mad and Japan Craft for OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Sorry...calming myself down...breathe...
Bit of backstory. At the start of the year, just before I founded this blog, I set aside some money for a two week holiday in Japan. Of course, lockdown hit and as time went on, it looked less and less likely until I out-and-out cancelled the whole thing. Thankfully I was able to get a refund on the flight, but man...all of that Gunpla I could've been getting my hands on earlier this month.
Well, thankfully I at least managed to set aside enough of the money I would have spent on model kits in Japan to get a kit I was looking to get anyway. My first ever Perfect Grade kit. Well...that and the LED unit as well.
Not gonna lie, the LED unit was actually harder to get than the actual Gundam, seeing how the only places among my usual haunts that had it were Amazon (who I don't have the best track record with as far as Gunpla is concerned) and Japan Craft, who...for as good a store as they are, have a worrying tendency to mark up the prices to cover import costs or something. Like, to a noticeably greater extent than other places I've looked at. They're one of those places you go for if they happen to be the place which has a specific thing you're after, and not necessarily for impulse buys.
I promised myself I'd only start building this kit when I have my hands on the LED unit, since otherwise that would almost certainly necessitate dismantling the kit just to get it in. And uh...certain kits that aren't as pricey as this one have made me wary of doing that.
In any case, let's get the box open. But before we do, I'd like to give you an idea of how big the box is. Here it is in comparison to my A5 cutting mat...
...and here it is in comparison to the box for the MG Dynames.
Yeah. Pretty big. Like, this is one of those boxes that's so big, it needs a handle on the top. Not even the EX-S went that far.
I've looked ahead at the manual for the LED unit and I had a bit of a headache at first. Not only do they assume that you will indeed partially dismantle the kit in order to fit the wiring in, but they really weren't expecting English speakers to get their hands on this kit, it seems. Hopefully Google Lens can give me a decent enough impression of what they want from me, and thankfully there is a part separator tool included with the LED unit. So ok, change of plans, if Bandai is confident enough in people assembling it wholesale first, then I'll do it that way if it means I don't have to constantly flip between manuals. All it really means is that I won't fit the whole Gundam together once all the individual parts are done.
(A FEW MOMENTS LATER)
Oh, never mind! There's some segments outlined in pink in the manual for the actual Gundam that show how to put the LED unit in anyway. Phew! Looks like I won't be disassembling this thing after all!
I made sure to grab 4 AAs before putting in the battery pack. Threading the first cable around was pretty simple stuff as well, it just needs to go over and under a holder on the underside of the base, then out the back where it threads up the vertical stand I just assembled.
Yes, this base is indeed bigger than my cutting mat, once again!
There's also a standing Banagher Links figure as well. |
Getting the wires to slot into position was a little annoying, especially the middle three on the back. But I reckon that as long as they're in the right places roughly by the time the whole torso is assembled, it should be alright.
Can I be honest here? Throughout putting the legs together, I dreaded the moment where I had to get the wires out, because trying to slot these things into the exact arrangement was a royal pain. There's a specific length and tight spaces that they need to fit into at the right length, and I'm honestly concerned that I didn't do it right. Part of me regrets not getting hold of the Perfect Grade Exia with its lighting kit instead - it gives off a much better impression of being designed with the lighting in mind, as opposed to this which feels like it was designed to be a gundam first, then with the lighting added much later in production. The least I can hope for is that the articulation is at least as good as it should be and that it actually lights up in the end.
Deep breaths...
In any case, the size of these things is still pretty cool. I mentioned this in a video over on my Tiktok, but just one of these legs is about as tall as the Master Grade EX-S, and that's only counting the height of the Gundam itself, not how high up it is when on the stand. Yep. Pretty big.
The flaps on the waist unit tend to move outwards on their own thanks to the wires getting bunched up. The manual suggests hooking the wires around some notches near the middle of the waist, but I can't see any grooves for them to fit in like with the leg assembly, so that didn't seem to work. Instead I tucked them out of sight into the uppermost parts of the leg armour. It shouldn't be too bad, posing kits isn't really my usual thing when it comes to completed Gundam models. And as long as it hides the wires as the design intends, all will be good.
I can at least safely say that I plugged in the wires correctly, it lights up as you might expect with a ton of glow coming through even when it's all in Unicorn Mode.
Man, I'm looking forward to when this thing is completed and in Destroy Mode!
This is the second time I've ever seen an articulated hand pre-assembled on the runner. The first being the Master Grade Origin RX-78-2. These are much more complex, however. I don't at all blame anyone for being unable to clean up the stress marks.
The manual is extremely unclear about how to tuck the wires in once attached to the Gundam. The wiring in the arms themselves is significantly less annoying than in the legs, but right at the end, it drove me completely insane. At least twice thus far, I was really wishing I got something like the Perfect Grade Exia instead. You know, something where the lighting setup makes sense and isn't just awkwardly tucking wires into places they barely fit. But in any case, we've got a pretty important component left to do now, and everyone is telling me that this is a particularly fiddly part. Great.
I haven't taken as many photos of the head assembly as I wanted to, simply because of general stress. The manual is terrible at explaining how to fit some of the parts, particularly with regards to two fins on the head that seem designed to not fit at all, and the top two parts of the head, which are both poorly-explained and hard to attach/keep attached. Simply put, this thing was not fun to build. And the punchline is that the magnetic halves of the horn aren't enough to keep it aligned perfectly in Unicorn Mode. As a model, this thing is looking absolutely beautiful, but as an actual building experience, it's one of those times that I nearly felt put off of the hobby entirely.
At least they had the sense to tell you to remove the back of the head when connecting the head wire to the torso wire. And at least now I know that all the parts I want to see light up are lighting up fine.
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